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Michele Bachmann: Kent Sorenson assured us he was staying

By MAGGIE HABERMAN

12/29/2011 11:51 AM EST

POLITICO's Juana Summers reports:

Michele Bachmann said Thursday that hours before Kent Sorenson, the one-time chair of her campaign here, announced that he would instead support Ron Paul for president, he assured her and other campaign staff that he planned to remain with her campaign.

"He told a number of people on our campaign. There's a list an arm long of people that he spoke to. He apologized to me for considering leaving. He said that he would be staying," Bachmann told reporters at a media availability in Des Moines. "He was with me at our campaign stop in Indianola. He told all of our campaign that he was definitely on board, and then he got in his car and then he announced that he was going with the Ron Paul campaign."

Bachmann said Sorenson first approached her and said that he might abandon her campaign on Tuesday, citing financial reasons. A current Bachmann staffer, Wes Enos, has defended Sorenson and said money had nothing to do with the jump.

"I had a conversation with Kent Sorenson, and in the direct conversation that I had with him, he told me that he was offered money — he was offered a lot of money — by the Ron Paul campaign to go and associate with the Ron Paul campaign. No one else knows about that conversation other than Kent Sorenson and myself, and I know what he said to me," Bachmann said.

Bachmann declined to say how much money the Paul campaign allegedly offered Sorenson and said Sorenson's jump shows the "nervousness" of the Paul operation in Iowa.

"The only conversation was between Kent Sorenson and myself, and I know what I was told in that conversation. And clearly what that reflected was the nervousness on the part of the Ron Paul campaign that they were losing steam in Iowa, they were losing momentum in Iowa because Iowans eyes were opening up," she said.

Bachmann, who last night announced that Iowa state Sen. Brad Zaun would be taking over her campaign, said she doesn't believe her organization is in turmoil, and says "hundreds of thousands of people" are switching from Paul to her campaign.

On some level, it's hard for Bachmann not to talk about Sorenson, since she's been deluged with media coverage of it. That said, she addressed it fairly thoroughly last night, in real time, and at this point the argument could be made that she's calling needless attention to a pretty damaging storyline instead of trying to focus on a message to voters.